The Lost Boy
by MissLolaLavell
Summary: It has been months since Major Patrick Gordon fled from Downton, but Edith cannot forget the mysterious soldier who claimed to be the man that she once loved. When she tracks him down to a hospital in London, she is determined to finally get to the truth…
1. Prologue

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**_The Lost Boy_**

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_Prologue: _

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><p>He had fled from Downton in the pale half-light of an autumn dawn. Now it was winter, and he found himself alone in London, with only the vaguest of ideas as to how he came to be there. He recalled some indistinct notion of escape - an embryonic scheme to lose himself in the tide of human flotsam that had washed up on the Thames in the wake of the great war - but in this, as in many things, he realised that he had displayed more impulse than foresight. As intolerable as his situation had seemed at Downton, to be cut-off and friendless in this bleak city - shadowed always by drink and poverty, and the memory of things far worse - had brought him to his lowest ebb yet.<p>

The truth was that he was woefully incapable of surviving independently such as he was. His wounds had healed as much as they ever would, but his right hand was still next to useless, and his face was a twisted ruin of distorted flesh. The capital had more than enough young men freshly demobbed and clamouring for work…what hope did a disfigured cripple have of finding respectable employment? Now he had only a meagre army pension to live on, and a taste for gin that seemed to consume him more and more with each passing day. No decent boarding-house would offer him lodging, and he had pawned his service medals several weeks past in a desperate attempt to eke out his income.

It all seemed so very far removed from his former life - the life that should have been his still, were it not for...

He watched the days pass him by with only ambivalent interest. Whatever residual sense of pride he might have once possessed had dissipated along with the last of his money. He now spent his waking hours shuffling along the dockside, thin and unkempt, doing whatever small labours might earn him enough coppers to hurry to the nearest public house and buy a cheap bottle of oblivion. The city seemed to whirl beneath his feet, greying around the edges of his vision - irrelevant somehow. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. After all, he had already lost everything that a man could lose…his home, his entitlements, his family…the only things that he could now call his own were the clothes on his back, and his name.

Ah yes, his name.

He had possessed many names over the years. Back in Canada, he used to change names as often as he changed lodging houses, slipping on each new identity as easily as silk over skin. In London, however, he was Patrick Gordon, because that was the one he had decided that he liked the best. It was, after all, the name that _she _had once called him, and something of her memory lingered with it, like a faint imprint upon his heart. He found something strangely comforting about the anchorage of this new fixed sense of self, even if the name was not the one bestowed upon him at birth. He had been baptised anew by the daughter of an earl, in a place that seemed both far away and somehow long ago. He had thought about her a great deal during his exile in London. Indeed, there were some days that he thought of little else.

…_Edith_…

He knew that he would never see her again, of course. And - perhaps, he reasoned - it was for the best. He would have been shamed to his very core if she had seen him as he was then: a penniless drunken vagrant with a face that children fled from in the street. He was sorry that he had gone to Downton to tell his story. It had certainly done him no favours, and he was afraid that his actions had wounded her more deeply than he had ever intended. Better that she remember _her _Patrick as the foolish, doomed young man who had once boarded the Titanic, never to return.

It seemed kinder to everyone involved that he simply be forgotten.

x

The wind cut through him like a razor blade as he stumbled down the crowded street. The sky was bruised with the promise of snow, and the cobbles underfoot felt slippery with frost. Objectively, Patrick knew that the winter's were no colder here in England than they had been back in Canada, but somehow his heart did not quite believe it.

He made his way gracelessly through the swarm of dour, colourless faces; his cap pulled low over his eyes, his chin tucked firmly into his collar. His chest rattled with every inhaled breath that he forced from his lungs, and his body was wracked with fever. He was sick, he knew that - but he was out of gin, and the pounding in his head was impossible to ignore. A morning's worth of odd-jobs at the docks had secured him enough change to purchase a cheap bottle, and he stumbled through the crowd as quickly as his shivering legs would allow, eager to get home to drink himself into peaceful oblivion.

He turned a corner in the street, and in his haste failed to notice the incoming approach of a dock-worker. The docker - bent double under the weight of a unfeasibly large bag of coal - bumped into him roughly, the collision sending them both staggering backwards. Patrick simply shrugged off the contact and turned to march on, but the other man, obviously irritated, throws an angry fist in his direction.

"Oi, watch'er ya bloomin' idiot!"

Patrick glanced back at him over his shoulder, which was - he quickly realised - a mistake. He saw the look of horror unfurling on the docker's face as he froze, eyes widening to take in the ruined visage that stared back at him. His mouth hung agape, the smouldering pipe dangling precariously over the rim of his lip.

"Jesus Christ…" he muttered hoarsely, and Patrick wondered whether it was revulsion or pity that made the docker stop to lift his grimy cap and run a hand over his brow. "That _face_…"

Patrick had become used to such reactions, but he was by no means impervious them. He flinched, as though physically struck, and then ducked his head further down into the darkened hollow of his jacket. He turned and walked on - quicker this time; gaze fixed firmly to the ground - avoiding the eyes of the curious or the hostile that he passed.

He followed the river east, where the buildings became gradually shabbier and shabbier, until he found the familiar mildewed frontage of his lodging house. There he entered and climbed the creaking staircase, letting himself into the attic room with a key that was rusted with age. As always, he was careful to ensure that the door was locked securely after him - the other tenants were often violently drunk, and he did not allow himself to relax until he knew that the door was securely bolted - before slumping heavily into a chair and closing his eyes with a sigh. There he sat in the quiet semi-dark, and pretended for a moment that the face that he passed in the hallway mirror was not his own. A single tear escaped from his closed eyelids and traced it's way down the ruined hollow of his cheek. Then his hand reached for the gin bottle, as though of it's own accord, and he tasted salvation as the welcome sting of alcohol burned hotly down his throat.

He drank steadily into the evening. When his body could take no more, he fell into a feverish sleep, his breath rasping dryly in the cold night air. The war was over, and has been for some time, and so Patrick no longer dreamt of bloodshed. Instead he dreamt of a grand house in the country - a place that he had once foolishly believed could one day be his own - and a beautiful young girl with a smile that made his chest hurt with love.

"Edith," he murmured mournfully in the midst of his delirium. "…My dearest, dearest Edith."

x

It was his landlady that raised the alarm early the next day. She found him when he trudged up the stairs, intent on collecting his over due rent, and instead found him slumped over in an arm chair, as cold and still as an effigy in stone. He remembered nothing of the journey to hospital, nor of the frantic efforts of the doctors to save his life. It was only later, when he awoke from death's grip and the ward sister explained that he had nearly succumbed to pneumonia, that he found himself silently wishing that he had not been found at all.

x

_Tbc..._


	2. Prologue, Part 2

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_Prologue, Part Two: _

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><p>The letter arrived just as the Crawley family were being seated to breakfast. Mr Carson swept stiffly into the dining room, his silver tray loaded with all the familiar newspapers and letters that generally accompanied the mornings routine. He handed his lordship a copy of The Times with all the formal deference of a knight offering his sword to his sovereign, then moved his way down the table, presenting the ladies of the house with their various articles of correspondence. Edith Crawley sipped at her tea and ignored the activity around her. Her own social circle was rather more limited than that of her mother, or even her sister, and she was not much in the habit of receiving mail. It was only when she noticed Mr Carson hovering mutely by her elbow that she started, cup poised before her lips, and turned to look up at him quizzically.<p>

"There is a letter for you, Miss Edith," he announced imperiously, handing her a crisp white envelope before promptly departing. She took it from him with a vague frown, turning it over in her hands to examine the neat script on the front of the card.

"Goodness me, who on earth would be writing to Edith?" Mary's bored drawl drifted down the table from where she was seated to the left of her father. She had opened one of her own letters and was making a good show of pretending to read it, but her gaze flickered towards her younger sister, and Edith felt a hot flush creeping up her throat as she felt the weight of Mary's scrutiny fall upon her. "I'm sure it cannot be a suitor, or a friend, or anyone _interesting_. Are you writing letters to yourself now, dearest?"

"Mary, that is not kind," Cora admonished gently, not looking up from her breakfast.

Mary gave a glacial smile, as cold and as beautiful as the snow beyond the window, wholly unperturbed by her mother's half-heated rebuke. Mathew had been called away from Downton on business for a few days, and his absence had put her in a particularly spiteful mood. "Come along, Edith. Enlighten us. Who is it from?"

Lord Crawley shook his broadsheet and scowled at the financial section. "Yes, who _is _it from, Edith?" he asked, waving away a servant's offered tray of devilled kidneys.

Edith went pink as she fumbled with the envelope, her fingers suddenly clumsy and inelegant. She opened the letter and took a moment to scan the lines of handwriting, before announcing falteringly: "Nobody. That is to say, it's just from an old school chum."

"Oh dear," Mary took a languid bite out of her toast and laughed. "It's not fat little Alice Thorpe is it? You two were such an unfortunate looking pair, as I recall."

Edith swallowed, then folded the letter away and slipped it into her pocket. She turned her attention resolutely back to her tea. "No, no. It's from Eliza Warwick. I don't believe you know her. She married some years back and has been living in India ever since." She took a hesitant sip from her cup. Her hands were trembling with some violence, and the china rattled noisily as she set it back into it's saucer. Nobody noticed. She forced what she hoped was a guileless smile and looked up the table to her father. "She writes to tell me that she in London for a time, visiting her mother, and to ask if I would go to visit her. May I, father?"

"Oh, how nice," Cora murmured absently, still intent upon her kedgeree.

Lord Crawley's scowl deepened, though his gaze never moved from The Times. "I'm not certain that I like the thought of your going to London alone, Edith dear. Why don't you invite her to Downton instead? Tell her to bring her mother - we could make a weekend of it."

"I'm afraid that her mother is an invalid, and does not travel. I could hardly deprive poor Mrs Warwick of her daughter's company, even for a day. They see each other so seldom."

"No, no, I suppose not." Lord Crawley sighed and set The Times aside. He turned to his favoured older daughter. "Mary, I don't suppose you could go with her, could you? London is hardly the place for a young lady to travel unescorted."

Mary bristled. "Certainly not. If she wants to go gallivanting around the city then that is her affair. I'm not Edith's nanny, after all. Besides, I shall be far too busy. Wedding arrangements, you know."

Edith glanced pleadingly at her father. "Please father, I am perfectly capable of going by myself."

Lord Crawley shook his head, tapping the top of his boiled egg with a spoon. He levelled her with a even look that brokered no argument. "I shall think on the matter," he told her firmly. "We can discuss it later."

And that seemed to bring the topic to it's natural conclusion. Edith fell into considering silence, her lips pressed together pensively. Around the breakfast table, the conversation moved on to the usual family topics of interest - the upcoming wedding, chiefly, and the progress of Sybil's pregnancy. If anybody noticed that Edith's plate remained untouched, then they did not remark upon it, and when after a time she excused herself and went to her room, nobody pressed upon her for a reason.

X

Edith Crawley's bedroom, unlike the principle apartments of her parents and sister, was situated on the west wing of the ancient house. The windows commanded a fair view of the frost bitten lawns and snow-capped poplar trees, but the morning light that filtered through the glass was faint, and failed to penetrate far into the gloomy room. Edith pulled an elegantly crafted occasional chair closer to the window for better light and examined her letter once more, this time with all the open, anxious appraisal that she had struggled to conceal at breakfast. This time, in the privacy of her own room, she allowed her expression to reveal all that she felt, no longer fearful of betraying herself to her family. Her hand flew to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Something tight contracted painfully in her chest, and she hardly dared breath for fear of it.

"…_I am writing to inform you that, following recent inquiries, I have been able to discover the current location of one Major Patrick Gordon. He is, at present, a patient in St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, where he is recovering from a recent bout of pneumonia…"_

Edith read and re-read the words several times. She felt giddy, and sick, and far, far away from herself. The letter was from a man - a private detective, she supposed would be the correct terminology - that she had approached privately several months past in the hopes of tracking down Patrick Gordon after his disappearance. The arrangement had been a discreet one, and Edith had funded the endeavour through what small private funds she possessed that remained unknown to her parents. And now, finally, after what felt like an age of silence from the detective, her money seemed to have yielded results.

"Oh God," she whispered, and her voice sounded broken and unfamiliar to her own ears. "Patrick…"

X


End file.
